


Remedial Self-Knowledge

by theimprobable1



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Explicit Sex, Pining, Secrets, Sexual Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:00:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theimprobable1/pseuds/theimprobable1
Summary: There’s something different about Troy after he comes back from the air-conditioning repair school.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 113





	Remedial Self-Knowledge

Troy comes back from the air-conditioning repair school with a secret.

Abed doesn’t notice at first. In fact, it takes him an embarrassingly long time to figure it out, simply because Troy never keeps secrets from him. But looking back, the signs have been there since the beginning, since the very day Troy came back. That night, as they get ready for bed in their blanket fort, which had felt so empty without Troy, Troy asks him sheepishly if he would mind taking down the dreamatorium so Troy could have his own room.

“Sure,” Abed says after what he hopes is a completely normal-length pause, in a completely normal-sounding voice. The request comes out of the blue, and it hurts—he’s only just gotten Troy back, and now it seems like he’s losing him again. But he promised himself, when Troy was gone, that if he ever got him back, he would be grateful for what he has and would stop getting in the way of what Troy wants for his own selfish reasons.

“Really?” Troy asks, ducking his head. “I know the dreamatorium is important to you…”

“It’s okay,” Abed assures him, because it has to be. “I understand you want privacy. Especially if you and Britta get together.”

Troy blinks. “Uh—yeah. That’s… yeah.” Abed thinks he’s blushing, although it’s hard to tell in the low light. Troy and Britta disappeared for a while during the study group’s biology final/court victory/Troy’s return celebration. Abed didn’t ask about it because he doesn’t really want to know, but he can accept what it most probably means. Troy deserves his acceptance and support, even if Abed thinks the relationship is unlikely to work out in the long term. If it wasn’t Britta, it would be some other girl. Abed just has to live with that.

So Abed lets Troy have the room and tries not to think about what he and Britta will get up to in there. When the new school year starts, he even suggests that Troy should go to the wishing fountain with Britta. He wants to be a good, supportive friend. If the time Troy was gone has taught him anything, it’s that Troy could disappear at any moment due to circumstances outside Abed’s control, so he should do his best to control those that he can to avoid giving Troy reasons to _want_ to leave. And that means not letting his jealousy get the better of him.

So if Troy is a little more distant than he was before, Abed chalks it up to the natural progression of his relationship with Britta, and maybe some after-effects of his time at the air-conditioning repair school. He imagines that having to leave all your friends and family to become a member of a cult masquerading as a trade school and only getting out after the vice-dean gets murdered would be enough to affect anyone, let alone someone as sensitive as Troy. Troy doesn’t like to talk about it, so Abed doesn’t push. Troy hated it there; it makes sense he doesn’t want to discuss it. Abed has no reason to think there’s anything else going on, not yet.

*

_(Four months earlier)_

_Troy sits down heavily on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands. He feels like crying, but for some reason the tears don’t come, like he’s too sad even to cry. So he just sits there in silence, trying to calm himself down. He’s at the air-conditioning repair school, which is definitely not a normal school, but it’s still just a school. It’s not Mordor or anything. He’ll be fine. He’s good at fixing stuff. And at least his dorm room is actually pretty nice. Bigger than Abed’s old room was (what’s Abed doing right now? Is he okay? Does he miss Troy?) and the furniture seems to be of better quality. The other half of the room is a little messy, with piles of papers and books on the desk and clothes strewn over the bed, but nothing worse than Troy’s own usual level of messiness. He starts to wonder who his new roommate is, just when he hears fumbling from behind the door, which eventually opens to reveal a guy struggling to open it without dropping the plate of sandwiches and mug of steaming liquid he’s carrying._

_“Oh, hello!” he says brightly when kicks the door shut behind him and notices that he isn’t alone. He seems to be in his early twenties, with bright red hair and a round face full of freckles. “You must be Troy! I’m Mike.” He moves his left arm as if to offer a handshake, then seems to realize his hand is holding a plate. “Want a sandwich?” he offers instead. “They’re BLT.”_

_For some reason, the first thing to pop into Troy’s head is that he hasn’t had bacon since moving in with Abed because he was the only one in the apartment who ate it, but he never remembered to buy any. And then he’s thinking about Abed and Annie, and what they are having for dinner, and how he doesn’t know when he’ll get to have dinner with them again, or see them again, and if Abed is okay, and that’s when the tears come._

_“No, thanks,” Troy mutters, turning away from Mike. What a great first impression, immediately bursting into tears. He opens his duffel bag and starts rummaging around for a packet of tissues._

_“Are you okay?” Mike asks. Troy hears him set his mug and plate down on his desk and clear his throat awkwardly. “Do you need anything?”_

_“No, sorry, I’m fine,” Troy manages to get out as he wipes his eyes and tries to keep the sobs at bay. He doesn’t want to cry in front of someone he’s just met, even though he honestly doesn’t care what anyone at the AC school thinks of him. He only feels comfortable crying in front of Abed. He wants Abed. “Bacon makes me emotional.”_

_“... Okay,” Mike says slowly after a moment of stunned silence. “Well, if you change your mind, help yourself. I—sorry, is that_ hair?”

_He’s looking at the lock of hair Britta gave Troy, which must have fallen out of his bag as he was looking for tissues._

_“Um, yeah,” Troy admits, quickly shoving it into the drawer of his new nightstand, then realizing how weird that must look. “But it’s not—a girl gave it to me!” he adds quickly. “As a keepsake. I’m not a crazy serial killer who keeps his victims’ hair as trophies.”_

_“Good to know.” Mike sits down on his bed and takes a bite of one of his sandwiches. When Troy dares face him again, he’s munching contentedly and doesn’t seem bothered by Troy’s tears or his protestations that he’s not a serial killer, which, on second thought, is exactly what a serial killer would say. Mike nods towards the drawer. “Your girlfriend?”_

_“Almost,” Troy says after a moment of thought. He doesn’t know how to explain that he and Britta went on one date and then just continued dancing around each other instead of getting together properly, for reasons that don’t really make sense to Troy._

_Mike nods, swallowing. His sandwiches look really good. “Makes sense that you miss her. You don’t have to feel embarrassed about that. The first couple of weeks here can be rough, but once you get used to it it’s not so bad. Most of the guys are okay, and the food’s so much better than the Greendale cafeteria.”_

_“How long have you been here?” Troy asks, trying his best to make it sound like the idea of getting used to being here doesn’t make him want to go back to crying._

_“Since last semester. I can show you around later if you want.”_

_“Cool,” Troy says, mustering a smile. “Thanks. Can I still have that sandwich?”_

_*_

The first time Abed starts to suspect there’s something going on with Troy is on a Wednesday, after his and Britta’s afternoon Gender in Film & Media class. Britta has promised to drive Abed home, since Troy’s and Annie’s classes ended much earlier. As they get to the parking lot, though, Abed hears a laugh he’d recognize anywhere and when he looks around, he spots Troy a few cars away, leaning against a decrepit-looking truck. He’s talking to someone, laughing as they both look at something on Troy’s phone.

Abed’s heart smiles. He’s a little surprised that Troy didn’t go home, but he also knows that Troy gets distracted easily. Something probably caught his attention and he forgot the time, so now they’ll get to drive home together.

“Ooh,” Britta says when she notices him too, excitement obvious in her voice. “Do you think that’s Mike?”

Abed turns to her, confused. She’s looking at Troy and his companion and grinning widely. “Who’s Mike?”

Britta looks at him, her expression changing dramatically.

“What? No one!” she blurts out, eyes wide. “Just—bike! I was asking if you think I should get a bike! It’s much better for the environment than driving, you know. And cheaper.”

Abed is suddenly very interested in who Troy is talking to. He sets out in their direction, ignoring Britta, who tries to grab his arm to stop him.

“Hey, Troy,” he says as he gets closer. Troy looks up, a very ‘I just met LeVar Burton’ look on his face.

“Abed!” Troy squeaks, nearly dropping his phone in his haste to put it in this pocket. “Britta! What are you doing here?”

“Our class just ended,” Abed says. “I thought you’d gone home.”

“Yeah, I… didn’t,” Troy mumbles. His eyes dart around nervously and it almost looks like he’s blushing. What is going on here?

“So you’re Abed and Britta,” says the guy standing next to Troy. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Mike.”

Abed certainly hasn’t heard anything about _him,_ but Britta clearly has, and Abed isn’t sure what to make of that. He looks at Mike and tries to determine what sort of character he is. He’s tall and white but too plain-looking to be a leading man; based on this brief interaction, he seems relaxed and easy-going—the main character’s friend in a coming-of-age movie, maybe? Definitely a secondary character, though, unless it’s a show that runs long enough that most of the original main cast have left.

“Mike was my roommate at the AC repair school,” Troy explains somewhat reluctantly.

“Thank you so much for taking care of our Troy back there,” Britta says, oddly emphatic.

“My pleasure,” Mike smirks.

“We should get going!” Troy says at the same time, unnecessarily loudly. “I think Annie’s making mac and cheese for dinner. Abed, let’s go. Bye, Mike!”

Abed isn’t very good at reading facial expression, especially on people he’s never met before, but he’s pretty sure he recognizes the look on Mike’s face as he says goodbye to Troy, because he’s seen it directed at Troy many times by most members of the study group: fond exasperation. He thinks Troy is being silly, but also adorable, for reasons that are currently unclear to Abed. He thinks he’s figured something else out, though.

*

_“I think someone’s having sex in Dennis and TJ’s room,” Troy blurts out as soon as the door falls shut behind him. Mike is sitting up on his bed, playing a game on his phone._

_“That would be Dennis and TJ,” he says without looking up from his phone. “I don’t think they realize how loud they are.”_

_Troy stares at him. How is he so unconcerned about this?_

_“But… I thought relationships were forbidden.”_

_“Yeah, with the outside world,” Mike says, looking at Troy like he missed something obvious. “This isn’t a monastery, Troy. No one expects you to take a vow of chastity. Well, not unless you want to. I think you get access to the High Chapel of the Five Winds if you do, but it’s not obligatory or anything.”_

_“So people just… hook up with each other?”_

_“It happens, yeah,” Mike shrugs. “Everyone gets horny sometimes.”_

_The air-conditioning repair school is about 90% male, Troy estimates. Which means that even if all the women were interested in casual sex, most of the men would have no other option but each other. It doesn’t mean they’re gay, it’s just basic math. Like in a prison or in the army or something. They’re just helping each other out. Everyone gets horny sometimes. And lonely. Troy’s lonely all the time._

_He thinks about the moans and grunts he heard from Dennis and TJ’s room. They didn’t sound lonely at all. Troy’s skin feels oddly sensitive. He looks at Mike, the curve of his jaw, the faint reddish stubble on his cheeks, the mess of curls on his head._

_“Do, um. Do you ever… do that?”_

_Mike finally looks at him with his full attention. He raises an eyebrow. “Are you offering?”_

_“No!” Troy says hastily. “I mean, I’m just asking! Out of... curiosity.”_

_Mike’s blue eyes stay fixed on him, the corner of his mouth lifting into a small smile. “What else are you curious about? Maybe I can show you.”_

_It’s probably not that different, having a guy touch you instead of a girl. A hand is a hand, a mouth is a mouth. Troy gets horny sometimes, too. There’s nothing wrong with that._

_It’s not gay, it’s just math._

_*_

“You know it’s okay if you have other friends,” Abed tells Troy in the car as they drive home. This is what it’s all about, it has to be: Troy made a new friend at the air-conditioning repair school, someone he feels close to, and he was worried how Abed was going to react. Troy knows Abed’s fear of abandonment better than anyone, it makes sense he was reluctant to tell him. Maybe it’s the same reason why Troy and Britta never engage in any kind of PDA in front of Abed. As far as Abed knows, Britta has never even spent the night in Troy’s bedroom, even though she was the reason why Troy wanted the room in the first place. (Unless she climbs in and out through the window, which would be cinematically interesting but realistically impractical.) Troy probably thinks Abed is too fragile to be able to share him with anyone else, and Abed can’t exactly blame him for that, given how he reacted the first time Troy went out with Britta.

“What?” Troy asks, taking his eyes off the road for a second to glance at Abed.

“You never told me about Mike, but you’re clearly friends with him. It’s okay, you don’t have to keep him a secret. I know I had a mental breakdown when you left but that won’t happen just because you have a new friend, or a girlfriend.”

“No, Abed, that’s not—it’s not like that,” Troy says, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. “I’m not trying to keep secrets from you, okay? I promise.” He swallows, gazing straight ahead. “It’s just, the AC school was… kind of crazy. And I guess I’m not ready to talk about some things that happened there, so it’s easier to just not talk about any of it.”

They stop at a red light and Troy turns to face Abed. “But it’s not because I don’t trust you or because I think you’d have a mental breakdown. I don’t think that.” He reaches across the center console for Abed’s hand, which Abed now notices had been playing with the zipper tab on his hoodie. “Okay, buddy?”

Abed meets Troy’s eyes, warm and soft and sincere, and nods. “Are _you_ okay?” he asks. It’s possible that the AC school traumatized Troy more than Abed thought, and he hates the thought of him wrestling with that on his own.

Troy gives him a small smile, squeezing his hand. “I am now.”

Someone behind them honks; the light has turned green.

_*_

_“I’m not gay,” Troy says into the dark. He’s back in his own bed, but he can still feel Mike’s touch on him. In him._

_“Okay,” Mike mumbles sleepily. Troy waits for the inevitable ‘Me neither’, but it doesn’t come._

_“Are you?” he asks when he can’t bear it anymore._

_“Yes.”_

_“But—but you said! You said you only did it because everyone gets horny sometimes and there aren’t enough girls!”_

_“Hm, no, I don’t think I said that. I was gay before I got here and I’ll still be gay after I leave.”_

_“Oh.” Troy stares at the ceiling, his body frozen but his heart hammering. He had sex with a gay man. It wasn’t just two straight bros helping each other out. It was gay sex. And he liked it. A lot._

_“What if I_ am _gay? Do you think I am?”_

_“Only you can answer that question, Troy.”_

_“Yeah, but what do you think?”_

_Mike sighs and shifts in his bed. “I think that, based on recent evidence, you’re probably not straight. You could be gay, or bi, or pan—”_

_“I could be a Pan?” Troy interrupts him. It makes no sense, yet it sounds strangely appealing—he could just live in a labyrinth somewhere and not have these problems, these weird, confusing feelings that make his stomach churn. Although he’s not sure if it would be worth the risk of running into the Pale Man._

_“Pansexual,” Mike explains. “It means being attracted to people regardless of gender.”_

_Troy considers this. “Do you think that could be me?” That wouldn’t be so bad, he thinks, because then he could still like girls, right? And nobody would ever have to know about the things he and Mike have done and the things Troy sometimes thinks about and the way Abed makes him feel._

_“I don’t know, Troy. The only thing I know is that you’ve only mentioned your ‘almost-girlfriend’ once, and only because I asked, but you talk about Abed_ all the time,” _Mike points out, as if he could hear Troy’s thoughts._

_“Because he’s my best friend!” Troy says automatically, defensively, but he already knows that it’s only partially true. “Everyone feels like that about their best friend! It doesn’t mean I’m—anything!”_

_“Listen,” Mike says in a soothing voice, like he’s talking to a spooked animal. “I get that this is confusing and scary for you, but it’s really late and I’m tired. Could we maybe talk about this in the morning? I can find some websites to help you figure this out.”_

_“Websites?” Troy asks. “Like… gay porn?”_

_“No,” Mike chuckles, “or yes, if you want, we can do that, but I meant like… LGBT resources. Things that can help you understand your sexuality better.”_

_“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”_

_“No problem. Can I go to sleep now, or are you freaking out too much?”_

_“I’ll be fine,” Troy says, even though he’s certain he won’t be able to fall asleep. “Night, Mike.”_

_Some moments later, when the bedroom fills with the sound of Mike’s gentle snores, Troy grabs his phone from his nightstand, and after debating with himself for a while, he googles ‘sexual orientation test’._

_*_

Annie is reading on the couch when they get home, very obviously not cooking dinner. She barely looks up as she greets them, clearly engrossed in her book, then adds, “Oh, Troy, you’ve got a package. It’s on the table.”

Troy makes a sound that Abed imagines would be made by a mouse when someone steps on it. He rushes to the table, grabbing the box so forcefully it makes Annie lift her head from her book in surprise.

“Um,” Troy says when he realizes that both Abed and Annie are looking at him with equally puzzled expressions. “It’s, uh. A thing. A… prop! For my dance class! But you can’t see it before the winter recital, or it’s bad luck. You know how superstitious dancers are.” He laughs awkwardly, then gives a little nod of his head as if to convince himself that this was an absolutely believable explanation, and darts to his bedroom.

Annie looks at Abed, her eyebrows drawn together. “What’s going on with him?”

“I have no idea,” Abed replies, the weight of that admission sitting heavily in his stomach.

*

_Mike says that simply sharing space with other men while being gay doesn’t make you a predator, but Troy feels all wrong. He avoids looking at anyone he passes in the dorms who isn’t wearing the standard baggy gray jumpsuit, because he isn’t even sure anymore if he can tell the difference between simply having eyes and actively checking someone out. Most of the AC guys aren’t even all that attractive, but that doesn’t make him feel any better because it feels wrong to have an opinion on their attractiveness at all._

_(And then he thinks about Abed, the fact that he shared a bedroom with him, and occasionally even a bed. The fact that he’s seen him dressing and undressing, shirtless, flushed after a run, in nothing but his underwear, and a few times briefly even entirely naked. The fact that the things Troy felt on at least some of those occasions, if not all of them, were decidedly not platonic.)_

_But he sleeps with Mike again, and then again, and again, and nothing about_ that _feels wrong. It feels like what he thinks sex is supposed to feel like, when you actually want it instead of tricking yourself into thinking that you do. Then one day he’s at the air-conditioning repair school’s state-of-the-art private gym that the rest of Greendale would kill for, and there’s just one other guy there, jogging on the treadmill. It’s Dan, and they get chatting when he hops off and stretches, his eyes lingering very obviously on Troy’s flexing biceps. He’s tall and gangly with long fingers and big brown eyes, and who is Troy even trying to kid? They end up fucking in the locker room, fast and a little rough, and afterwards Troy has to force himself not to burst into tears with how much he misses Abed. How much he wants Abed, in ways he’s never allowed himself to want him before._

_And it’s more than just physical attraction. He loves Abed. He knew that before, of course. He knew that he loved him as a friend, he still loves him like that, but he also loves him in a different way and has for a long time, maybe since the beginning._

_He doesn’t know what to do about it. But it doesn’t actually matter, since he has no idea when he’ll even get to see Abed again. He’s stuck here, with feelings he can’t do anything about and a new-found sexuality to explore. Maybe, if he’s lucky, it will all have resolved itself by the time he gets out. People fall out of love all the time, don’t they?_

_(He doesn’t really think it’s likely.)_

_*_

Maybe all these things could be dismissed as nothing to worry about, but then on Monday Abed’s suspicions that Troy is keeping a secret from him get confirmed. He walks into the study room just in time to hear Britta tell Shirley about how she spent the entire Saturday night at an emergency vet clinic with one of her cats.

Abed feels like Emma Thompson when she opens a Christmas present from Alan Rickman, expecting a necklace but finding a CD. Because Troy didn’t sleep at home on Saturday. He was supposed to spend the night at Britta’s, like he does once or twice a week. But he clearly didn’t. He was somewhere else. With someone else.

He sits down on his chair, taking out his books on autopilot. Troy walks in a moment later, but Abed can’t look at him.

Troy lied to him. About Saturday night for sure, but maybe also about every other night he didn’t spend at home, every supposed date with Britta. Are they even really dating, or is the entire relationship a smokescreen? Is Britta in on whatever this is, or does she have no idea that Troy uses her as a pretext?

Where does Troy go? What does he do? With whom? Does being the truest repairman mean he’s some kind of superhero who has to go on secret missions? But Troy has explicitly told Abed he would tell him if he was a superhero. Is he in some kind of danger that prevents him from confiding in Abed? Is the AC repair school somehow forcing him to keep quiet? From what Abed knows about the school, he wouldn’t put it past them, but Troy is also supposed to be their messiah, they shouldn’t have this kind of hold on him. Or does Troy simply no longer want to share things with Abed? Maybe they were apart for too long, maybe Troy has finally learned that he doesn’t need Abed and is actually better off without him…

He doesn’t realize he’s emitting a high-pitched whimpering sound until it stops ringing in his ears. Troy’s holding him, stroking his hair and murmuring soothingly, the way he always does to calm Abed down. There’s a squishy stress ball in his hands and he can tell without opening his eyes that the rest of the group have left, the lights have been turned off and the blinds are closed. Troy always does this for him, always takes care of him, does his best to make Abed as comfortable as possible in what is by definition a painfully uncomfortable situation. Whatever is going on with Troy hasn’t changed that, which makes it even harder for Abed to understand.

He shifts, prompting Troy to relax his hold on him.

“Hey, buddy,” Troy says gently when Abed opens his eyes to look at him. He gives him a small smile that Abed knows so well, one that means _glad you’re back_ but also _here for you no matter what._ Abed _doesn’t understand._ How can Troy be keeping things from him if he still cares about him?

“Would you tell me if you were in trouble? In danger?” he asks, his voice low and hoarse.

Troy frowns. “Yeah, of course I would. Who else would I tell?”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.” Troy keeps stroking his hair, looking a bit worried now. “I’m not in any trouble. Did you think I was?”

Abed swallows and looks down. He can’t answer. He doesn’t know how to say _I know you’re lying to me_ without crumbling into dust. 

*

_Back in the outside world, it’s suddenly all much more real. The air-conditioning repair school was crazy, even for Greendale. Troy could probably chalk up everything that happened there to being high on room temperature, or something like that, if he wanted to._

_He doesn’t want to._

_He’s gay._

_He’s really, really gay. Which is more exciting out here, because there’s nightclubs and dating apps and websites that sell all manner of things specifically designed for butt stuff. But it’s also so much more terrifying, because there’s his family and his friends and people he doesn’t care about so their opinion shouldn’t matter to him but somehow it still does. And there’s Abed, and Troy’s feelings for him that definitely haven’t gone away._

_He doesn’t mean to tell Britta. But he’s never been good at coming up with excuses, and when he tells her that they can’t be together, he simply can’t think of a single reason why a guy would refuse to date a girl beside being gay. She’s surprisingly fine with it, and seems even more excited about the prospect of being his fake girlfriend than she was about being his real girlfriend._

_He doesn’t really mean to do the whole fake girlfriend thing either, but then Abed assumes that he and Britta have started dating now and Troy just… goes with it. He’s not ready to explain why they aren’t, not to anyone, but especially not to Abed. Once he tells him, it could change everything, and he doesn’t know if he could take that. On the one hand, if there is one person in the world likely not to be weird about it if their best friend turns out to be in love with them, it’s Abed. But on the other hand, as incredible as Abed is, he’s still just human, and it would be completely understandable if he was uncomfortable with something like that. Troy just needs a little more time. To make sure that this is really what he wants, what he feels, who he is. Because his friendship with Abed is the most important thing in his life, and if he’s going to do anything that could ruin it, he has to be certain that it’s worth it._

_Fake-dating Britta is convenient, too, when he wants to go out with no questions asked. He doesn’t even have to lie outright, just say that he won’t be back till morning, and Abed and Annie assume he’ll be with Britta. It does feel like lying, though, and Troy knows that he won’t be able to go on like this for much longer. Sooner or later, he’ll have to muster the courage and just… come out, whatever the consequences might be. He’ll do it. Soon._

_“Wanna take this somewhere private?” a tall dark stranger shouts in his ear over pounding music, his bulge pressed against Troy’s hip as they move in a way that doesn’t really qualify as dancing. Troy agrees, and tries not to think about Abed._

*

Two days later, Abed still hasn’t figured out what to do. He knows that the right thing would be to simply be upfront and ask Troy for an explanation, but he’s afraid of what would happen if he did, of what he would find out. All signs point to Troy having a secret that he simply doesn’t _want_ to share with Abed. And that should be okay, they are their own people, Troy doesn’t _have_ to tell him everything, except Troy lied to him, and friends don’t lie.

He’s still mulling it over in his head when he finds the last piece of evidence, one that makes everything slot into place.

He’s putting some of his freshly laundered clothes away in the closet in the hall when he accidentally knocks down Troy’s hoodie hanging on the hook on the door. As he picks it up, a strip of bright yellow paper falls out of one of the pockets.

It’s a torn wristband, Abed realizes as he turns it over in his hands. One with the name of Greendale’s most popular gay bar printed on it.

For a second he thinks he must be mistaken. Flashing lights and loud music are the exact opposite of his definition of a good time, so his information might be outdated. But he grabs his phone and quickly googles the name, and he’s right. He’s right, and everything suddenly starts making sense.

It’s not that Troy _wants_ to lie to him, it’s just that he’s not ready to tell the truth. He basically _told_ Abed that. He said that something had happened at the AC school that he wasn’t ready to talk about. And clearly, what happened is that he fell in love with Mike.

It seems obvious now. The way Troy reacted when Abed and Britta surprised him and Mike together. The fact that he wanted his own bedroom, but never dared invite anyone in. (Unless Mike was the one climbing in and out the window.) Britta clearly knows about it, which explains her excited reaction when meeting Mike. Maybe Troy told her because he felt he had to, to avoid leading her on, or maybe he simply felt more comfortable sharing that with her than with Abed. And Abed can’t blame him for that, since it’s not like _he’s_ ever told Troy he likes guys. He always worried that it would make Troy uncomfortable, make him want to avoid the level of intimacy they shared (and tip him off about the exact nature of Abed’s feelings for him). Especially if Troy’s discovery of his sexuality is as recent as Abed thinks it is, it’s completely understandable that he’s not ready to come out, Abed can’t be upset with him about that.

But he is upset, a little bit. Or he’s… something. He’s not sure what the feeling is. Sad, maybe. Sad that Troy must be feeling so scared about how his friends and family are going to react once they find out. Sad that he couldn’t help Troy, that Troy has had to deal with this alone. Except he isn’t alone, Abed reminds himself. He has Mike, his _boyfriend._ And if Mike deserves that title, he surely gives Troy all the love and support he needs. And that—that’s good. Abed can be happy for Troy. He _is_ happy for him. It twists the knife a little deeper, yes, since ‘Troy _can’t_ like you that way because he’s straight’ was easier to accept than simply ‘Troy doesn’t like you that way because you’re you’, but it ultimately makes no difference. It’s not like Abed ever harbored any real hope. 

He’s just trying to decide what to do now when Troy walks out of his bedroom, startling Abed from his thoughts.

“Abed, can you read through my essay? I don’t know if—” he cuts himself off mid-sentence when he notices the look on Abed’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Abed holds up the wristband. “This fell out of your pocket.”

He sees the moment Troy realizes what it is, alarm flashing through his features. “That’s just—it’s—”

“It’s okay, Troy,” Abed says quickly, hating the sudden edge of panic in Troy’s voice. “I know what it is. And I’m sorry you didn’t get to tell me on your own terms, but I promise it’s okay, you don’t have to be scared.”

Troy stares at him with wide, vulnerable eyes, and then his face moves the way it does before he bursts of tears and Abed is suddenly certain that he’s done the wrong thing, he should have pretended not to have noticed anything and let Troy come out to him in his own time.

“Troy,” he says softly, stepping closer, but before he can decide whether he should touch Troy, Troy throws himself in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, burying his face in Abed’s neck. “I wanted to tell you, I did, I know you thought there was something wrong but I just couldn’t—I couldn’t—”

“It’s all right,” Abed says, hoping that for once he’s managed to adequately modulate his voice to a soothing timbre. “You weren’t ready, you don’t need to apologize for that.” Then he just rubs Troy’s heaving back and lets him cry for as long as he needs to. When Troy’s sobs die down, Abed brings him a paper towel from the kitchen so he can blow his nose, and mixes two glasses of Special Drink since the situation clearly calls for it.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he hands Troy his glass and sits down next to him on the couch.

“Yeah,” Troy mumbles. “Sorry for… overreacting like this.”

“Troy. Don’t apologize for any of this, I mean it.”

Troy glances at him with a half-hearted smile, then takes a sip of his Special Drink.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Abed asks. He wants to be there for Troy, but he also doesn’t want to push.

To his mild surprise, Troy nods.

“I tried to make myself tell you for so long,” he says slowly. “But it was like I had two brains, and one of them knew you were gonna be okay with it but the other one didn’t, and they just kept fighting each other, you know?”

“I get it. For what it’s worth, I think the others will be okay with it too, if you wanted to tell them. I assume Britta’s the only one who knows.”

Troy glances at him apologetically. “I had to tell her. She thought we were gonna pick up where we’d left off, and I didn’t know how else to explain that I couldn’t do that. And it felt good to just tell the truth to someone.”

Abed does his best not to be hurt by the fact that Troy felt safer confiding in Britta than in him. “Britta is a sensible choice for the first person to come out to. Guaranteed to take it well.”

“Yeah, she’s been really good about the whole thing, considering. She kept telling me I should just talk to you, and so did Mike. At least I’ll finally get them off my back now.”

Abed’s stomach twists at the mention of Mike, but he’s determined to ignore it.

“I’d really like to meet him properly now, if you’re comfortable with that.” Abed needs to learn everything about him, to determine if he’s good enough for Troy. Which is unlikely, since Abed can barely even imagine a person worthy of Troy. At any rate, Abed must at least give him the ‘hurt him and I’ll kill you’ talk, which is the only silver lining about this goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.

Troy looks up at him in surprise. “Who, Mike? Why?” he asks, like it makes no sense for Abed to want to do that.

“You don’t want me to meet your boyfriend?” It’s pretty hard not to be hurt by _that._ It’s not like Abed _wants_ to spend time in Mike’s company, but he knows full well that animosity between a character’s best friend and their love interest never leads anywhere good, and he’d like to avoid that if at all possible.

“Oh! He’s not my boyfriend.”

Abed’s entire body stills.

“He’s not?” he asks, and he hates the flicker of hope that immediately comes to life in his chest. Just because Troy isn’t dating Mike doesn’t mean he could be interested in Abed. In fact, what it probably means is that the purpose of his visit (visits?) to the gay club was precisely to find someone who _isn’t_ Abed. The thought of strangers touching Troy in dark corners makes a wave of nausea rise in Abed’s throat, but he swallows it down.

Troy shakes his head. “I mean, we did, um. Hook up a couple of times.” Troy says the last part very fast, the words bleeding into each other so they’re almost unintelligible. “Back at the AC school. That was kind of the start of the whole thing. Me figuring out I’m gay, I mean. But we’re just friends now.”

“So you aren’t interested in him like that?” Abed asks carefully. He’s also careful not to ask about the exact meaning of ‘a couple’. 

“No,” Troy says, and Abed is gratified to see that he seems completely sincere, not like he’s trying to hide an unrequited crush. “He’s cool, and he really helped me, like, accept myself and all that, but no. I’m not sure I’m ready to be in a relationship, anyway.” Troy’s talking faster now, like he’s trying to outpace the thoughts in his head. “And he’s got a boyfriend now, actually. Never shuts up about him, which would be adorable if it wasn’t so annoying. But I guess I can’t complain, given that—” He stops, looks at Abed, looks away, and takes a deep breath. “Given that I never shut up about you.”

Abed is certain that his heart simply stops beating at that moment. Troy could mean that he never shuts up about Abed as a friend, but the parallel with Mike talking about his boyfriend is undeniable and Abed doesn’t think he can breathe unless Troy explains exactly what he means.

Troy breathes out slowly through his mouth, staring at the glass of Special Drink in his hands, and then continues.

“This is the real reason I was afraid to tell you. It’s not just that I like guys in general. It’s that I like _you,_ specifically.” He looks up at Abed then, clearly terrified but determined to push through it. “But I don’t want anything between us to change, or to make you uncomfortable. I promise we never have to talk about this again if you—”

Abed kisses him. It’s absolutely vital to let Troy know that he has nothing to worry about, but Abed doesn’t think he could form a coherent sentence if he tried. It may be a little bit too forceful, too eager, the way he presses his lips to Troy’s, but it’s hard to control his body when the dream he’s forbidden himself from having is suddenly coming true. Troy gasps in surprise against his mouth and when Abed pulls back his eyes are wide and uncertain but hopeful.

“Abed?” he asks in a small voice, scanning Abed’s face, and Abed realizes that he _has to_ make himself form a coherent sentence. He can’t let Troy think that this is just some kind of bi-curious experimentation on Abed’s part, or anything like that.

“I like you too,” he says, even though it’s a massive understatement of his feelings for Troy. “I have for years.”

“Wh—? Really? For years?” 

Abed nods. He wonders if he’s revealing too much too soon, but he doesn’t think he could pretend this means anything less to him than it does.

“Probably since the day you overcame your fear of rats for me,” he admits. Troy’s face morphs into an expression Abed has never seen, and his hand comes up to gently trace his thumb along Abed’s cheekbone.

“I had no idea,” he breathes, sounding awed. “You never said anything.”

“I thought you were straight,” Abed points out, and stops fighting the urge to lean into Troy’s touch. It’s so gentle and reverent, Abed feels like he might pass out.

“That’s fair, so did I,” Troy acknowledges, making a face. “I can’t believe it took being forced to join a literal cult for me to figure it out.”

“You got there, that’s what matters.” Abed wouldn’t mind waiting for Troy twice as long if it meant he’d have Troy touching him like this afterwards.

“Yeah. I got there.” Troy stops touching him only to take Abed’s glass from his hands and place both glasses on the side table. Then his hands are back on Abed, one cupping his cheek and the other on his hip as he leans in and brings their mouths together again. The kiss is better this time, softer, although it doesn’t stay that way for long. It’s like the first touch of their lips ignites a spark that flares into a flame within seconds, and the longer they kiss the less Abed wants to stop. He licks the taste of Special Drink out of Troy’s mouth until all he can taste is Troy, sighing when Troy moves to straddle his lap. The angle is better that way, Abed can kiss him deeper, harder, even if he has to tilt his head back to do it, which he isn’t used to but it feels _so_ good. 

His hands roam over Troy’s back, feeling the muscles move under his touch as Troy shifts closer to him, bringing their chests together. He lets his hands slip to the waistband of Troy’s pants and then lower still, to the twin globes of Troy’s ass. He squeezes gently and Troy moans into his mouth, his pelvis stuttering forward. Abed becomes aware of his own rapidly growing erection as Troy’s presses against him and he gasps out Troy’s name, heat flooding through him. Their hips align and fall into a perfect, instinctive rhythm, their mouths sliding together sloppily as they grind against each other, and it’s so simple and basic yet somehow better and hotter than Abed’s top ten movie sex scenes put together. He’s certain of that even though he can’t remember any of the scenes on the list, but he knows for a fact that none of them smell like Troy, sound like Troy, feel like Troy—the flexing of his glutes under Abed’s hands as he rocks forward, his hot breath on Abed’s face, his fingers tangled in Abed’s hair, the little whimpers escaping his lips. It all feels so good, it’s everything Abed has always wanted but never thought he could have.

Or almost everything.

“Wait,” he says into a kiss, grabbing Troy’s hip points to hold him still. “Troy, wait.”

Troy immediately stills, moving his head back to look Abed in the eye. “What’s wrong?”

He looks so beautiful. His lips are shiny from kissing, cheeks flushed, pupils blown wide, and the look in his eyes is so tender Abed briefly forgets why he stopped, what was so important that making out with Troy had to wait.

“You said you weren’t sure if you’re ready to be in a relationship,” he says, recollecting himself. “I can’t do this with you if it’s just sex. Also Annie could be here any minute and I don’t think any of us is ready for the interrupted intimacy trope,” he adds to distract from the vulnerability of his admission.

Troy’s eyes soften further, so much it’s almost unbearable. “It could never be just sex, not with you,” he whispers. “Abed, I’m—I’m so in love with you.”

So many TV shows have led Abed to believe that saying I love you too soon can ruin a relationship or at the very least be intensely uncomfortable, but apparently that doesn’t apply if you’re best friends and you already knew you loved each other more than anything and you’re just shifting the meaning a little bit.

“I’m in love with you too,” he exhales, and part of him wants to go back to making out immediately, Annie be damned, because every second not spent kissing Troy and making him feel good is a second wasted, but the rest of him simply can’t move or even just stop looking at Troy. He never foresaw a reciprocated love confession in his arc. He already subverts character conventions by not being an awkward virgin and/or uninterested in sex, he didn’t think he could get anything more than that. But he also never expected to have a best friend, certainly not one like Troy. He should be used to Troy exceeding all his expectations by now.

He’s about to break their intense eye contact and get back to what they were doing when to his disappointment, Troy climbs off his lap.

“Come on,” he says, grabbing Abed’s hand. “We don’t want the interrupted intimacy trope.”

Oh yes, that. Tropes are a thing that Abed knows about. Or used to know about, back when he cared about things other than Troy’s hand in his or the fact that _Troy loves him._

Troy leads him to his bedroom, and once the door has fallen shut behind them, he steps closer to Abed, looking deeply into his eyes.

“I said I wasn’t ready for a relationship because I didn’t think you were an option. I thought I’d have to get over you before I could date someone else, and I knew I’d never get over you unless you rejected me. So none of that could happen until I worked up the courage to tell you. But now…” He trails off. The look in his eyes seems meaningful, but Abed needs him to be explicit.

“Now you feel ready?” he prompts.

“I think so? I mean, I thought I was ready to date Britta and that was obviously wrong, so what do I know. But I _want_ it. I want to be with you. It just feels right. You and me. We should be together.”

“We should be together,” Abed confirms, his heart pounding. It does make perfect narrative sense. He holds Troy’s gaze for a few seconds longer, just existing in this flawless, crystalline moment, the tipping point of their relationship. Then he dives in for another kiss, capturing Troy’s mouth with his and licking inside, and he doesn’t come back up for air until he’s walked Troy to the bed, pushed him down on it and climbed on top of him.

“But that means no more seducing people in clubs,” he breathes against Troy’s lips, slipping his hands under Troy’s shirt, feeling the warm skin on his sides. He doesn’t think for a second that Troy would do that now that they’re together, but he wants to stake his claim nonetheless.

“What makes you think I seduced anybody? I could’ve just— _ah!_ —gone to dance.”

“I’ve seen you dance. You wouldn’t even have to try.”

He’s mouthing along Troy’s jaw while pushing his shirt up to his armpits, but Troy’s hands move from his back to his head, forcing him to look up.

“You’re the only one I ever thought about,” he says, breathy and raw and unguarded, and the last of Abed’s self-control evaporates.

*

All things considered, Troy is grateful for all his sexual experimentation because it gives him a frame of reference. Without it, he wouldn’t have been able to tell how much _better_ it is with Abed. It’s clumsy and undignified, but it’s also so much more intense than anything else Troy has ever experienced. Frantic groping and rutting alternates with stretches of languid kissing that’s really just breathing into each other’s mouths, filled with reverence and awe that they get to share this together, and if Troy was less turned on he’s sure he’d cry with how full his heart is.

It also means that there’s a moment when Abed holds his wrists above his head and growls _“Mine now”_ before sucking on his pulse point, and Troy very nearly comes in his pants right then and there. He saves that information for later, certain that he could find a way to make Abed’s apparent possessive streak work in his favor. For now, though, he just moans “ _Yours”_ in response, because he is.

They take ages to undress each other, distracted by the need to never stop kissing, and when they’re finally, blissfully naked together, they’re both too far gone for anything fancy. Abed’s fingers wrap around them both as they rock together, pleasure rising and then spilling, hot and bright.

Afterwards, Troy lets Abed wipe him down with a tissue, a gesture that feels unexpectedly intimate, and then he snuggles into Abed’s chest in a way that’s very familiar, even though they’ve obviously never done it while naked. He finds Abed’s hand and threads their fingers together, sighing contentedly.

“Abed?” he says after a while of blissed-out cuddling.

“Hmm?”

“I’m so happy right now,” Troy says because he has to, because otherwise his heart would just explode.

Abed kisses his temple, and Troy can feel his lips turn into a smile. “Me too. I love you.”

Unable to resist, Troy shifts so he can reach Abed’s mouth and murmurs “I love you” between kisses several times, just because he can, and then they just lie there and grin at each other like loons. Well, Troy’s grinning like a loon, probably. Abed’s just kind of smiling softly and looking incredibly lovely, but Troy knows there’s the exact same feeling behind it.

“Why did you want your own room?” Abed asks him after a while. “Was it just that you wanted privacy to use your ‘dance class prop’?”

Troy ducks his head, feeling his cheeks heat.

“You figured it out?”

“Only just now.” He doesn’t say anything else, which Troy is grateful for. He’s not sure he’s ready to discuss his choice of sex toys just yet.

“Uhh… partly,” he admits. “Mainly I just… didn’t wanna objectivize you?”

“Objectify.”

“Yeah. I just thought, what if I couldn’t stop myself from looking at you when I shouldn’t, and it made you uncomfortable. I didn’t want that to happen.” He nuzzles Abed’s nose as another thought occurs to him. “But that’s not an issue anymore, so… you could move in here with me?” He’s missed falling asleep to the sound of Abed’s breathing, and the room has always felt very lonely without him.

“I’d like that,” Abed says softly. “Annie would definitely notice, though. Are you okay with that?”

It’s not a difficult decision at all. “Yeah. We can tell her. We can tell everyone.” The prospect is still a little scary, but he has Abed. He can do anything.

Abed brings their joined hands to his lips and _kisses the back of Troy’s hand._ Troy thinks he might swoon.

“Are you sure? We can wait if you want, I don’t mind.”

“No, I’m okay. I mean… I probably don’t want to tell my parents just yet. But we have to tell our friends. They see us every day. I couldn’t hide being in love with you every day.” He has a feeling he’s going to be absolutely obnoxious about it, actually. He and Abed are going to be so sickeningly in love it will make other people want to avoid them out of pure jealousy.

“Cool,” Abed says, kissing him. “Cool cool cool.” Troy wraps an arm around his waist to pull him closer, deepening the kiss but keeping it slow and unhurried. Round two is inevitable, there can be no doubt about that, and Troy has absolutely no intention of leaving this bed before he’s had Abed inside him, but there’s plenty of time for that. Plenty of time for some lazy kissing and cuddling first. Plenty of time for anything they want. They have the rest of their lives.


End file.
